Sen. Trent Lott (R) Elected 1988, 3d term up 2006
Born:	Oct. 9, 1941, Grenada
Home:	Pascagoula
Education:	U. of MS, B.A. 1963, J.D. 1967
Religion:	Baptist
Marital Status:	married (Tricia)
Elected  Office:	U.S. House of Reps., 1972-88.
Professional Career:	Practicing atty., 1967-68; A.A., U.S. Rep. William Colmer, 1968-72.
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Trent Lott, Senate majority leader from June 1996 until June 2001 and majority leader-designate in November and December 2002, was first elected to the House in 1972 and to the Senate in 1988. He grew up in Pascagoula, the son of a shipyard worker and a teacher, went to Ole Miss (where he was a cheerleader, like his Mississippi colleague Thad Cochran) and worked his way through law school by running the Ole Miss alumni affairs office, accumulating good contacts along the way. After a year of law practice, he got a job with Democratic Gulf Coast Congressman William Colmer, chairman of the House Rules Committee. When Colmer retired in 1972, Lott ran for the House seat with Colmer's encouragement and endorsement--as a Republican. He was elected with 55% in what was the strongest Nixon district in the country that year. In 1974, Lott was the youngest member of the Judiciary Committee, loyally defending Richard Nixon in the impeachment hearings. In 1980, he was elected Republican Whip, and he ran the Republican National Convention's platform committees in 1980 and 1984. In the House he was an ally of Jack Kemp and Newt Gingrich. He supported Kemp for president in 1988, and his decision to run for the Senate that year opened the way for Gingrich's rise: Lott was succeeded as whip by Dick Cheney; when Cheney became Defense secretary in March 1989, Gingrich was elected whip 87-85.

There is a discernible hard core of beliefs in Lott's career, and yet he is less the hard-edged ideologue that Washington insiders presumed than he is an instinctive deal-maker, not much interested in quixotic gestures, an orderly and well-organized man who is dismayed by the dilatoriness of others. As one colleague put it in 2001, "After pork, Trent's default position is conservative--but he likes to compromise." His beliefs are reminiscent of the mostly unarticulated beliefs of the coalition of Southern conservative Democrats and small-town conservative Northerners which had controlled the House for most of the 35 years prior to when he arrived there: Against increased taxes, hostile to federal regulation of business and local government, for an assertive foreign policy and strong defense, for the traditional rules of moral conduct. On one issue, civil rights, he has moved from Colmer's support for racial segregation to the small town Republicans' backing for equal rights--although doubts were raised about that by comments he made at Strom Thurmond's 100th birthday party in December 2002, comments that cost him the majority leadership. He can be sharp in debate, aggressively partisan and combative, but he is gregarious and personable, striving to keep on good terms with most other members and careful to cultivate those whose support he needs.

In the Senate, as in the House, Lott seemed less interested in committee work than in moving into a leadership position. After the 1992 election, he ran for Conference secretary, the number four leadership post, and won. In 1994, after he had been reelected 69%-31%, he challenged Republican Whip Al Simpson. Majority Leader Bob Dole and most Republican moderates backed Simpson, but Lott won most of the younger conservatives elected in 1992 and 1994 and won 27-26--the first Republican ever elected whip in both houses. In the process he leapfrogged over his Mississippi colleague Thad Cochran, who held the number three leadership position.

As whip for 17 months, Lott was careful not to usurp the prerogatives of Dole, who kept many decisions close to the chest. Then in May 1996 Dole surprised almost everyone when he announced he would resign from the Senate in June. Lott immediately began canvassing for votes for majority leader and found himself far ahead of Cochran, who ran anyway and lost 44-8. During the summer, Lott moved adroitly, pushing for a vote on welfare reform, disposing of the minimum wage issue, pushing for the compromise health care bill and the Safe Drinking Water Act. He gave Senate Republicans a solid record to run on--but left Dole with fewer issues on which to attack Clinton. He established a smooth working relationship with Democratic Leader Tom Daschle.

After Dole lost and Gingrich faced ethics charges that threatened to topple him, Lott was suddenly the most visible Republican leader in Congress. At times he angered colleagues. His insistence on investigating the Louisiana Senate race results infuriated Democrats. Conservatives were angry when he worked with the Clinton administration, and against Foreign Relations Chairman Jesse Helms, to secure ratification of the Chemical Weapons Treaty in April 1997.

Then came impeachment, which tested both his influence among Republican senators and his close working relationship with Tom Daschle. In December 1998 after the House voted, Lott encouraged the Gorton-Lieberman plan to allow four days of argument in the impeachment trial, to be followed by a vote on whether the charges, if true, would justify impeachment; if that fell short of the two-thirds required for removal, as everyone assumed it would, the trial would be adjourned. House Judiciary Chairman Henry Hyde, the leader of the House managers, wrote an angry letter and Senate conservatives howled; Lott retreated. Democrats remained furious about the prospect of a lengthy, salacious trial, and raised the specter of partisanship which most senators, after the House debate and in line with Senate tradition, wanted to avoid. On January 7, Lott tagged along with Daschle for a scheduled press conference, and they agreed to an all-senators closed caucus the next day. In that extraordinary meeting, senators agreed to a suggestion by Phil Gramm and Edward Kennedy to postpone the issue of calling witnesses and go on with the trial. There was giddy delight at this demonstration of senatorial comity, though the House managers were furious and the Clinton defense team still wary. The trial proceeded in orderly fashion; the verdict went as expected, mostly along partisan lines, with Lott and most Republicans preventing a vote on censure until after the verdict, at which point Democrats weren't much interested.

In 1999 and 2000, Lott tried to bar non-germane amendments on appropriations bills, arguing that Democrats were using them to hurt Republicans in elections and that it was better procedure to have "clean votes" on issues. He took to filing cloture petitions when he brought bills to the floor and filed lots of amendments himself, to preclude others. Democrats were immensely irritated, and in spring 2000 relations between Lott and Daschle turned very sour; Daschle said Lott was resorting to "a Senate version of dictatorship that I think is unacceptable." In June 2000 Nebraska's Chuck Hagel said there could be changes in the leadership if Republicans lost seats in November; Hagel had contemplated running against Lott after the November 1998 elections, and ran unsuccessfully against campaign chairman Mitch McConnell instead. In July 2000 Lott steered estate tax repeal through, but at the cost of allowing votes on many Democratic amendments. In fall 2000 Lott followed a "no veto" strategy and tried to negotiate with the Clinton administration on appropriations; House Republican Whip Tom DeLay, who wanted to set clear conservative markers and get members out of town, opposed this. The result was relatively high spending, and a delay in many appropriations until after the November elections and, as seemed sensible, after the Florida recounts as well.

By late 2000, almost everyone seemed angry with Lott for one reason or another. "I don't feel unappreciated, and I don't feel exceedingly appreciated," he said. But no one--not even Majority Whip Don Nickles, a frequent critic--moved to run against him, though Lott ally Larry Craig was challenged for his leadership position and kept it by only a 26-24 vote. Lott had lost some of his closest confidants in the Senate--Connie Mack retired, Paul Coverdell died in July 2000 and Slade Gorton, after a long recount, was defeated for re-election. That left the Senate divided 50-50. Democrats demanded equal numbers of members on each committee; some Republican conservatives strongly opposed that, though some committee chairmen offered equal membership. On January 5, 2001, after negotiations with Daschle, Lott surprised many by agreeing to equal membership. There was a strong theoretical argument for that--committee membership should reflect the balance on the floor--but even stronger practical arguments; plus not insisting on every ounce of partisan advantage was probably prudent. Lott wanted to make sure that no Democratic senator would challenge the Florida electoral votes on January 6, and thereby trigger debate on that issue. Lott acceded to John McCain's demand for two weeks of debate on campaign finance regulation in March, but in May had still not sent the bill over to the House; McCain got a 61-36 vote for a resolution calling on him to do so, and he did. In early May he abruptly fired Senate Parliamentarian Robert Dove after Dove disagreed with him on whether a provision of the budget resolution would trigger a 60-vote point of order. Yet even as Lott was moving aggressively, there was always the possibility that control could shift to the Democrats. Most observers pointed to 98-year-old Thurmond as one senator who might leave office, but there were 45 senators with governors of a different party, 26 Democrats and 19 Republicans, whose departure could change party control. While there was some hope that Georgia's Zell Miller--much paraded about as a Democratic backer of Bush's tax cut--might cross the aisle and strengthen this fragile majority, it was not much suspected until May 2001 that James Jeffords would defect and unravel it. The visibly angry Lott called it a "coup of one" and said, "The decision of one man has--however else you describe it--trumped the will of the American people."

Even as Minority Leader, Lott had sharp elbows. In July 2001 he decried "an anti-Mexican, anti-Hispanic, anti-NAFTA attitude among Democrats" when they sought to block Mexican trucks from entering the country. He asked for review of the American Medical Association's contract to set Medicare and Medicaid reimbursement rates after the AMA backed the Democrats' HMO regulation bill. In 2002, after the Senate Judiciary Committee voted down his nominee Charles Pickering for a federal appeals court judgeship, he blocked a $1.5 million request from the committee for oversight funds, blocked the nomination of a Daschle staffer to the FCC, derailed an energy bill amendment by Dianne Feinstein and blocked continuation of a Judiciary meeting. When it became clear that Senate Democrats would pass no budget resolution, he said, "The Senate is becoming dysfunctional, the Daschle Democrat dysfunctional process." In the fall things seemed to be going very much his way. In October 2002 Don Nickles announced he would not challenge Lott for the leadership, even though term limits would force him to leave his position as Whip. On election night, Lott, Hastert and Senate and House Republican campaign chairmen Bill Frist and Tom Davis and their wives dined at the White House with George W. and Laura Bush, and exulted as the returns came in. The president's party for the first time in history went from a minority to a majority in the Senate in an off-year election. Lott would be majority leader again.

Then came Thurmond's 100th birthday party. Speaking from notes Lott said, "I want to say this about my state. When Strom Thurmond ran for president, we voted for him. We're proud of it. And if the rest of the country had followed our lead, we wouldn't have had all these problems over the years, either." There were audible gasps and silence, but Lott went on. Major media did not mention the comment over the next 24 hours. Asked about it, Lott's spokesman the next day said, "Senator Lott's remarks were intended to pay tribute to a remarkable man who led a remarkable life. To read anything more into these comments is wrong." But bloggers--people who write weblogs, commenting frequently on various topics--noticed. On December 6, the liberal blogger Joshua Marshall called Lott's comments "just another example of the hubris now reigning among Capitol Hill Republicans," and they were noted in abcnews.com's The Note. On December 7, Thomas Edsall wrote a short story about the comments in The Washington Post. By Monday, December 9, conservative bloggers were writing about Lott's comments, and not favorably. Former Bush White House speechwriter David Frum in nationalreview.com wrote, "I cannot help thinking that this story is not over--that Republicans will hear Lott's words quoted at them again and again in the months to come." National Review's Jonah Goldberg wrote in nationalreview.com's The Corner, "On the facts, Lott's comments were dumb. Morally, they were indefensible."

It was not surprising that liberals like Al Gore and Jesse Jackson called on Lott to resign the majority leadership, but it was noteworthy that demands for his resignation resounded over the conservative weblogs. On December 9 Lott, on vacation in Key West, Florida, three hours' drive from the nearest television studio, issued a statement saying, "A poor choice of words conveyed to some the impression that I embraced the discarded policies of the past. Nothing could be further from the truth, and I apologize to anyone who was offended by my statement." Tom Daschle downplayed the remarks and Lott's sometime adversaries--Jeffords and former Democratic Senator Paul Simon--came forward to testify that he was not a racist. But others poking through old clippings found similar comments. Campaigning with Thurmond for Ronald Reagan in November 1980 Lott said, "You know, if we had elected this man 30 years ago, we wouldn't be in the mess we are today." Lott had voted against the Martin Luther King holiday, and against extension of the Voting Rights Act; he had opposed denial of tax-exempt status for Bob Jones University despite its policy of banning interracial dating. In the early 1960s, former CNN President Tom Johnson noted, Lott had opposed integration of his Sigma Nu fraternity (Johnson, to his embarrassment, had opposed it too). On Thursday, December 12, George W. Bush spoke to an inner city group in Philadelphia. "Any suggestion that the segregated past was acceptable or positive is offensive, and it is wrong. Recent comments by Senator Lott do not reflect the spirit of this country. He has apologized, and rightly so. Every day our nation was segregated was a day that America was unfaithful to our founding ideals."

On December 13 Lott held a press conference in Pascagoula and announced that he would appear on Black Entertainment Television the next week. "I apologize for opening old wounds and hurting many Americans who feel so deeply in this area. I take full responsibility for my remarks. … I only hope people will find it in their heart to forgive me for that grievous mistake on that occasion." On December 15 a "senior administration official" was quoted in The Washington Post as saying, "He didn't do what he needed to do. People were looking for absolute and total contrition, and I don't think they saw that." The same day, on ABC News's This Week, George Stephanopoulos read a statement from Don Nickles questioning whether Lott could continue to serve as majority leader. Lott's hearty endorsement of affirmative action on BET December 16 dismayed some conservatives who opposed racial quotas and preferences precisely because they believe they violate the civil rights laws which Lott's old boss William Colmer strongly opposed. Lott had been elected majority leader at a November 14 Republican Conference meeting, and that could not be reconsidered until the next scheduled meeting January 6, unless five members called for a special meeting. Nickles was one such vote, and it quickly became clear that there would be others. On December 19 Bill Frist stepped forward and said he would accept the job of majority leader if his colleagues voted for him; Mitch McConnell recommended to Lott that he step down immediately. On the same day, John Warner and George Allen publicly supported Frist as Lott's replacement. On the morning of December 20 Lott stepped down. By the end of the day, Frist had the votes to become majority leader, and was elected by a Conference meeting held by conference call. He said later that he had no "vengeance in his heart" but noted a little tartly, "You can't just lay this at the door of the Democrats--some of the Republicans didn't do me any good either. I plan to look to the future, to be very sensitive to everything I say." In January 2003 Lott became chairman of the Senate Rules Committee, which has a limited jurisdiction but affords some prominence; if Republicans retain their majority, he will preside over the Inaugural ceremonies on January 20, 2005.

Lott gave up a safe House seat to run for the Senate in 1988, and was elected over Democratic Congressman Wayne Dowdy. He won by a 61%-39% margin in the Jackson area, the Gulf Coast and other counties where turnout had increased 10% since 1980; in the rest of the state, Dowdy won only 51%-49%, giving Lott a 54%-46% win overall. In 1994 and 2000 Lott did not have serious competition and won easily, 69%-31% and 66%-32%.

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DC Office
487 RSOB 20510, 202-224-6253; Fax: 202-224-2262; Web site: lott.senate.gov

State Offices
Greenwood, 662-453-5681; Gulfport,228-863-1988; Jackson,601-965-4644; Oxford,662-234-3774; Pascagoula,228-762-5400.

Committees

• Commerce, Science & Transportation: Aviation (Chmn.); Communications; Oceans, Fisheries & Coast Guard; Science, Technology & Space; Surface Transportation & Merchant Marine.
• Finance: Health Care; International Trade; Long-Term Growth & Debt Reduction; Taxation & IRS Oversight.
• Intelligence (Select).
• Rules & Administration (Chmn.).

Group Ratings (More Info)
	ADA	ACLU	AFS	LCV	CON	ITIC	NTU	COC	ACU	NTLC	CHC
2002	0	20	0	0	78	88	69	100	100	97	--
2001	0	--	0	0	--	--	81	85	96	--	100

National Journal Ratings (More Info)
	2001 LIB	--	2001 CONS		2002 LIB	--	2002 CONS
Economic	0%	--	94%		6%	--	90%
Social	28%	--	72%		0%	--	62%
Foreign	0%	--	94%		0%	--	76%
For National Journal's complete 2002 Vote Ratings, as well as previous ratings dating back to 1995, please click here.

Key Votes Of The 107th Congress (More Info)
1. Approve Bush Tax Cuts Y 2. Expand Patients' Rights * 3. Campaign Finance Reform N 4. Permit ANWR Development Y 5. Confirm Ashcroft as AG Y 6. Bar Gays in the Boy Scouts Y		7. $ for Hate Crime Prosecution N  8. Overseas Military Abortions N  9. Bar Coop. with Intl. Court Y 10. Trade Promotion Authority Y 11. Authorize Force in Iraq Y 12. Homeland Sec. Dept. Union N

Election Results (More Info)
	Candidate	Total Votes	Percent	Expenditures
2000 general	Trent Lott (R)	654,941	66%	$3,663,052
	Troy Brown (D)	314,090	32%	$40,349
	Other	25,113	3%
2000 primary	Trent Lott (R)	unopposed
1994 general	Trent Lott (R)	418,333	69%	$2,516,189
	Ken Harper (D)	189,752	31%	$345,379
Prior winning percentages: 1988 (54%); 1986 House (82%); 1984 House (85%); 1982 House (79%); 1980 House (74%); 1978 House (100%); 1976 House (68%); 1974 House (73%); 1972 House (55%)